Help with Seal 210

I just acquired a used Seal 210 dry mounting press. I have never seen, let alone used, one of these before.

There are 2 foam pieces inside the press. One is a soft grey pliant foam and one is a thick hard black rubbery plate that sits at the bottom.

I am assuming that the grey foam has just been put there for protection during transit and should be removed - it looks like it would melt if I turned the press on. The black rubber plate I assume should just sit where it is and hold the prints flat inside the press.

Am I correct?

Does anyone have any other tips for using these? There is no manual.

Hi, you are correct about the foam. There is only a foam pad on the bottom, and a metal platen on the top. Usually, I use a 4-ply mat board on top of the print, and another one below. To adjust the pressure for mounting, via the top knobs, put top, bottom and mounting boards in and adjust so when the platen rests on the boards, but not locked down, the handle is at a 45 degree angle from horizontal.

Jon

Thanks. That's useful to know.

I also just found that the black pad has a cloth covering underneath. Should this actually be face up?

There are also a couple of pieces of wooden board underneath the pad. I assume the previous owner used these to sandwich prints in the press. With these in place the handle is at 45% as you say.

PM me if you want a PDF of the Seal 210 manual. It is 960k in size and has 12 pages.

mrtoml said:

I just acquired a used Seal 210 dry mounting press. I have never seen, let alone used, one of these before.

There are 2 foam pieces inside the press. One is a soft grey pliant foam and one is a thick hard black rubbery plate that sits at the bottom.

I am assuming that the grey foam has just been put there for protection during transit and should be removed - it looks like it would melt if I turned the press on. The black rubber plate I assume should just sit where it is and hold the prints flat inside the press.

Am I correct?

Does anyone have any other tips for using these? There is no manual.

Click to expand...

The soft pliant foam is for standard dry mounting and the hard rubber plate is a spacer for extra compression if needed, placed under the soft foam. My press (bought new many years ago) came with a hard synthetic board (1/4" thick), for added compression, and a soft foam piece w/ yellow felt surface (1" thick), for general use.

The wooden boards must be the spacers if the hard rubber board has cloth on one side. It seems as though you have a choice as to what amount of compression you intend to use.

With cloth covered rubber or foam you wont need to use mat board in the sandwich, Just use release paper - it's quicker - the heat is transfered more efficiently.

mrtoml said:

Thanks. That's useful to know.

I also just found that the black pad has a cloth covering underneath. Should this actually be face up?

There are also a couple of pieces of wooden board underneath the pad. I assume the previous owner used these to sandwich prints in the press. With these in place the handle is at 45% as you say.

Click to expand...

Hi, the felt side of the rubber pad should be on top. The masonite pressure board is not used for sandwiching the print.

Jon

Or, maybe the boards were for cooling and flattening the prints after pressing.

Drymounting is a bit of a craft unto itself, so probably not good to start off practicing with valuable prints!

The Achilles Heel of drymounting is humidity/moisture. I don't know about the boards you describe, but I think it is best to simply use three sheets of white matt board, two above and one below your print and mounting board. White, so dirt and debris is readily apparent. To drive off moisture, I heat the whole assembly maybe 20s, then pull from the press, remove top two matt boards and fan the print. It will curl, don't worry. After maybe 20s of fanning, place the whole assembly back in the press for the prescribed time. (Up to you to find out what that is!)

At completion, pull the assembly from the press as quickly as practical, lay flat and put the solid board on top with some weight to cool. (I give it ten minutes, so you can see if you have many prints to do, it is helpful to have more matt boards.)

A digital kitchen thermometer is helpul to calibrate your temp rheostat. Hope this helps.

The process is very simple. Release paper protects the print and the press and allows shorter time intervals in the press and lower temperatures - mat board is only a substitute for release paper - the only thing that should be between the platten and the print is the release paper, and the trick to getting flat prints is to cool the print rapidly (still sandwiched in the release paper) between two cool flat surfaces - metal is best for it's high thermal conductivity, or heat dissipation. It's not high science.

Note that RC prints require a very narrow temperature range (not too high), or they'll be ruined - for FB prints the range is very wide (min. 200°F).

Thanks for all your helpful replies.

I have ordered some unimount tissue and some silicone release paper, but is has not arrived yet.

So to start with I assume that I put the black pad with yellow cloth side up on the press (with the two pieces of hard board underneath for added pressure). Then I can just use two pieces of release paper either side of the print (tacked onto a mount board via the tissue). Is this correct? Then take the print out and then leave to cool with a weight on top.

I then assume that if I get blemishes on the print showing (because the pad and platen is not 100% perfect) that I should use a conservation board sandwich as well.

I have tried out the press a bit this afternoon. I just attempted to flatten some prints with wavy edges using the 200 degree setting and some ordinary mount boards. I was surprised how curly they came out, but also surprised how well they settle on cooling. Now they are pretty flat.

The other thing that surprised me was that some mountboard I put in also curls a lot when i take it out and has not returned to normal. Does this indicate anything? I.e. should I be buying thicker board?

mrtoml said:

The other thing that surprised me was that some mountboard I put in also curls a lot when i take it out and has not returned to normal. Does this indicate anything? I.e. should I be buying thicker board?

Click to expand...

The thicker board would do the same thing. It's the temperature differential that causes the warping, one surface is hotter than the other, expanding or contracting at a greater rate compared to the other surface. Try flipping it over to cause it to warp in the opposite direction. If you insist on using mat board, use acid free board. I've been using the same piece of release paper for a couple of years now, it doesn't warp or curl.

Good luck with your new press - you'll wonder how you ever did without one.

I have not had any problems with good quality cotton rag mat. Perhaps I am not reading the above correctly; the purpose of two matboards over your print is three fold: acid free surface, additional pressure, and most importantly they diffuse the heat to give even heating. (Takes a little longer to get to temp, though.) I do not think it is a good idea to have the release paper directly between print and heated platten. Throw some matboard in for diffusion.

Thanks for all your replies. I hope my dry-mount tissue will arrive today so I can experiment with some reject prints.

I also now have the manual (thanks ic).

With respect to the warping boards what I meant was that I put an 11x14 wrinkled print in between 2 12x16 boards to experiment with flattening (this was cheap acid free board - not museum quality rag). The print is now nice and flat, but the boards are warped. I assume that if I had dry-mounted the print to one of these boards it would also warp when removed from the press. So I guess you have to quickly put the mounted print under a weight or something when it comes out of the press. I read everything I had yesterday night on dry-mounting and found that a lot of this stuff isn't covered very well in the books and sometimes they give contradictory advice (I read my Ansel, Lootens and Vestal + lots of websites).

Just a hypothesis, but warping occurs during drying or the sudden loss of humidity. I suspect the humidity in UK is something like her in NW USA. Once the humidity is driven off the material, press it again, and let it cool with weight on it. It will be flat. Perhaps this is not an issue in some parts of the world, like Arizona.

mat board is more material to hold moisture. Seal specifically instructs on how to eliminate moisture quickly buy lowering the platen onto the work and raising it in quick succession, two or thee times, for short 1 or 2 sec intervals before full compression and full duration. You couldn't do this efficiently with mat board in the sandwich.

My tissue and release paper arrived and I have successfully dry mounted 2 8x10 prints today. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

I just used 2 sheets of release paper to sandwich the print and it worked fine. I flattened straight away under a weight afterwards and no warping has occurred. It is very damp in England now. I can't remember a day when it hasn't rained in the last month. I suspect that this can play havoc with this kind of process.